Archive for April, 2008

The misnamed Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith is creating a police state which is “good for the ‘Jews’.” Training takes place at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Do you think that this ADL mind-washing program will also warn of the dangers of police brutality against Christians and make an example of the murderous Judaic Cheka, GPU and NKVD Police of Russia led by the Judaic mass-muderer, Genrikh Yagoda? Not on your life.

FAIRFIELD n When Joshua Zabin first joined the Fairfield police in 1986, his grandmother Francis told him, “Be good to the Jews.”

“I didn’t have a full understanding of what she meant until I saw a photo at the Holocaust Museum,” says now-Sgt. Zabin. “It was taken in the streets of Berlin, of local police executing searches of Jewish homes, and there was an officer standing in the street, photographed from behind, and his leather jacket, hat, and boots were identical to ours. I literally said from the back of the room, ‘That could be me.’ That is why my grandmother said that to me. I think she was trying to say that police officers in Eastern Europe were not looked at as being kind to Jewish people. It all came totally full circle.”

Last month, Zabin and 10 fellow officers from the Fairfield Police Department became the first law-enforcement professionals from Connecticut to take part in “Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust.” The joint training program is designed by the United States Holocaust Museum and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to remind officers of the pivotal role they have in society in protecting both freedoms and security.

The message, as Zabin had discovered, was how easy it was for police, sworn to protect individuals’ rights and public safety, to collaborate with the Nazi regime.

Hitting home

Zabin, raised in a Jewish home in Fairfield, had first visited the museum two years ago. He had personal reasons to do so: Francis and her parents had come to the U.S. from the former Prussia years before the Nazis’ rise to power, but the rest of the family perished. Her brother is thought to have been involved in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Her brother-in-law, the late Dr. Alexander Zabin, was part of the U.S. Army’s surgical unit that liberated Dachau. An archive of the film he shot of the camp is part of the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s collections.After that initial visit, Zabin’s father told him about the training program for law enforcement, and Joshua suggested it to his superiors.

Last autumn, Fairfield Police Chief David Peck was taking part in the training with the FBI Academy. “He was at the museum and called me the same day, he was so moved,” Zabin recalls. “He asked me to organize a group of our officers for the spring.”

Zabin wanted to plan the visit close to Yom HaShoah. Chief Peck announced the opportunity, but indicated that participants would not be paid for their time, and would have to cover the expense of their own lodging and meals.

“I wanted those to go who really wanted to go,” he says. “It filled up immediately, and there are many others want to go now.”

Taking personal responsibility

On April 3, a group of 11 officers made the trip to Washington, Peck and Zabin among them. They were accompanied by Fairfield Police Commission Chairman Samuel Lazinger, and Fairfield First Selectman Ken Flatto. Lazinger is the child of Holocaust survivors, and Flatto’s wife, Liz, lost several relatives to the Nazis.

Created in 1999 at the request of Washington, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey, the museum’s program is designed to help law-enforcement officers better understand their personal and professional responsibilities in a pluralistic American society. So far, educators in the cooperative program have trained nearly 38,000 federal, state and local police officers and recruits, and 7,000 FBI agents. The program is a required part of training for all new FBI recruits, military academy training officers, and the D.C. police department. Three hundred Maryland state judges have gone through the training, and there are similar programs for New York and Illinois benches.

The training began with a short film about Hitler’s rise to power. Facilitators led the group on a private tour through the museum, discussing the photographs and documents through the eyes of a police officer. One of the facilitators was a young man from Austria who had chosen to serve in the museum in lieu of his mandatory military service back home.

After the tour, the officers met with museum staff and an ADL educator to debrief and discuss the dangers of stereotyping.

“The facilitator asks very pointed questions,” Zabin says: “What, in your mind’s eye, stood out the most? Why do you think law enforcement worked hand-in-hand with the occupying government? Did they do it willingly or were they forced or threatened? Why did some of the police officers keep their jobs, even after committing atrocities? Questions you’d ask yourself today: What decisions would I make in those situations, considering that my family depends on me?”

The group discussed the ethical dilemmas faced by police officers then and now. How do you stand up for what is right?

Zabin says he and his colleagues were most struck by the fact that law-enforcement officers worked hand-in-hand with the Nazi killing machine.

“That was a real eye-opener, part of the shock and disbelief,” he says. “I was already aware that local law-enforcement agencies were working in conjunction with the army, but they actually were part of the death squads. It’s hard to swallow because our role is to be trusted and we’re given a tremendous amount of power.”

The officers examined the role of stereotyping in a totalitarian government’s grip on power. “The facilitators asked, ‘What do you want others to think of you? and we answered things like honest, trustworthy, dedicated,” says Peck. “Then they asked, ‘What do you think people think of you?’ and we said things like lazy, dishonest, always eating donuts. We applied this thinking to the Nazi government: This was one of the tools they used to target certain groups. We’ve seen this happen in the U.S. as well. It’s what happens when people take stereotyping too seriously.”

Taking it to the streets

Peck sees the benefits of the training as two-fold. The department works closely with the Jewish population of Fairfield and dealt with security at synagogues and cemetery vandalism.

“After the training, we can look at these things from a different perspective,” he says. But there’s a larger message as well. “The power we hold can be easily abused and can lead to atrocities if not kept in check,” says Zabin.

“We are given so much power as police officers,” says Peck. “We take it for granted; I myself am going on 30 years of service. You go about your daily business, but you forget how much people fear you or how much you control others. If the government you’re working for is giving you guidance and orders on the fringes of what’s legal, you could very quickly go in that direction.”

Both Peck and Zabin were impressed with the enthusiasm of their fellow participants. “It was an extremely diverse group of officers who chose to go down, in terms of religion, ethnicity, gender, and ranking,” says Zabin “I was pleasantly surprised to see some of these people go and have an interest in the training.”

Peck plans to allow all his officers who are interested to take the training, “twice a year until everyone has had a chance,” he says. “It’s so important to reflect on what happened in the Nazi regime. It reminds you of your responsibilities in a democratic government. You take an oath to uphold all rights, of the individual and of the group. The training reminded us of the authority we have.”

The misnamed Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith is creating a police state which is “good to the ‘Jews’.” Training takes place at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Do you think that this ADL mind-washing program will also warn of the dangers of police brutality against Christians and make an example of the murderous Judaic Cheka, GPU and NKVD Police of Russia led by the Judaic mass-muderer, Genrikh Yagoda whom the Nazis learned from? Not on your life.

FAIRFIELD n When Joshua Zabin first joined the Fairfield police in 1986, his grandmother Francis told him, “Be good to the Jews.”

“I didn’t have a full understanding of what she meant until I saw a photo at the Holocaust Museum,” says now-Sgt. Zabin. “It was taken in the streets of Berlin, of local police executing searches of Jewish homes, and there was an officer standing in the street, photographed from behind, and his leather jacket, hat, and boots were identical to ours. I literally said from the back of the room, ‘That could be me.’ That is why my grandmother said that to me. I think she was trying to say that police officers in Eastern Europe were not looked at as being kind to Jewish people. It all came totally full circle.”

Last month, Zabin and 10 fellow officers from the Fairfield Police Department became the first law-enforcement professionals from Connecticut to take part in “Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust.” The joint training program is designed by the United States Holocaust Museum and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to remind officers of the pivotal role they have in society in protecting both freedoms and security.

The message, as Zabin had discovered, was how easy it was for police, sworn to protect individuals’ rights and public safety, to collaborate with the Nazi regime.

Hitting home

Zabin, raised in a Jewish home in Fairfield, had first visited the museum two years ago. He had personal reasons to do so: Francis and her parents had come to the U.S. from the former Prussia years before the Nazis’ rise to power, but the rest of the family perished. Her brother is thought to have been involved in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Her brother-in-law, the late Dr. Alexander Zabin, was part of the U.S. Army’s surgical unit that liberated Dachau. An archive of the film he shot of the camp is part of the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s collections.After that initial visit, Zabin’s father told him about the training program for law enforcement, and Joshua suggested it to his superiors.

Last autumn, Fairfield Police Chief David Peck was taking part in the training with the FBI Academy. “He was at the museum and called me the same day, he was so moved,” Zabin recalls. “He asked me to organize a group of our officers for the spring.”

Zabin wanted to plan the visit close to Yom HaShoah. Chief Peck announced the opportunity, but indicated that participants would not be paid for their time, and would have to cover the expense of their own lodging and meals.

“I wanted those to go who really wanted to go,” he says. “It filled up immediately, and there are many others want to go now.”

Taking personal responsibility

On April 3, a group of 11 officers made the trip to Washington, Peck and Zabin among them. They were accompanied by Fairfield Police Commission Chairman Samuel Lazinger, and Fairfield First Selectman Ken Flatto. Lazinger is the child of Holocaust survivors, and Flatto’s wife, Liz, lost several relatives to the Nazis.

Created in 1999 at the request of Washington, D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey, the museum’s program is designed to help law-enforcement officers better understand their personal and professional responsibilities in a pluralistic American society. So far, educators in the cooperative program have trained nearly 38,000 federal, state and local police officers and recruits, and 7,000 FBI agents. The program is a required part of training for all new FBI recruits, military academy training officers, and the D.C. police department. Three hundred Maryland state judges have gone through the training, and there are similar programs for New York and Illinois benches.

The training began with a short film about Hitler’s rise to power. Facilitators led the group on a private tour through the museum, discussing the photographs and documents through the eyes of a police officer. One of the facilitators was a young man from Austria who had chosen to serve in the museum in lieu of his mandatory military service back home.

After the tour, the officers met with museum staff and an ADL educator to debrief and discuss the dangers of stereotyping.

“The facilitator asks very pointed questions,” Zabin says: “What, in your mind’s eye, stood out the most? Why do you think law enforcement worked hand-in-hand with the occupying government? Did they do it willingly or were they forced or threatened? Why did some of the police officers keep their jobs, even after committing atrocities? Questions you’d ask yourself today: What decisions would I make in those situations, considering that my family depends on me?”

The group discussed the ethical dilemmas faced by police officers then and now. How do you stand up for what is right?

Zabin says he and his colleagues were most struck by the fact that law-enforcement officers worked hand-in-hand with the Nazi killing machine.

“That was a real eye-opener, part of the shock and disbelief,” he says. “I was already aware that local law-enforcement agencies were working in conjunction with the army, but they actually were part of the death squads. It’s hard to swallow because our role is to be trusted and we’re given a tremendous amount of power.”

The officers examined the role of stereotyping in a totalitarian government’s grip on power. “The facilitators asked, ‘What do you want others to think of you? and we answered things like honest, trustworthy, dedicated,” says Peck. “Then they asked, ‘What do you think people think of you?’ and we said things like lazy, dishonest, always eating donuts. We applied this thinking to the Nazi government: This was one of the tools they used to target certain groups. We’ve seen this happen in the U.S. as well. It’s what happens when people take stereotyping too seriously.”

Taking it to the streets

Peck sees the benefits of the training as two-fold. The department works closely with the Jewish population of Fairfield and dealt with security at synagogues and cemetery vandalism.

“After the training, we can look at these things from a different perspective,” he says. But there’s a larger message as well. “The power we hold can be easily abused and can lead to atrocities if not kept in check,” says Zabin.

“We are given so much power as police officers,” says Peck. “We take it for granted; I myself am going on 30 years of service. You go about your daily business, but you forget how much people fear you or how much you control others. If the government you’re working for is giving you guidance and orders on the fringes of what’s legal, you could very quickly go in that direction.”

Both Peck and Zabin were impressed with the enthusiasm of their fellow participants. “It was an extremely diverse group of officers who chose to go down, in terms of religion, ethnicity, gender, and ranking,” says Zabin “I was pleasantly surprised to see some of these people go and have an interest in the training.”

Peck plans to allow all his officers who are interested to take the training, “twice a year until everyone has had a chance,” he says. “It’s so important to reflect on what happened in the Nazi regime. It reminds you of your responsibilities in a democratic government. You take an oath to uphold all rights, of the individual and of the group. The training reminded us of the authority we have.”

During his recent visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI not only conducted mass and met with the Catholic faithful, but he made a series of public statements about the role that our Judeo-Christian faith can play during these challenging times. As an evangelical Protestant I happen to disagree with Pope Benedict on many issues of Christian doctrine and ritual. But when it comes to his moral vision for America and the world I have one thing to say in response to the Pope’s visit: Amen.

I and many other evangelical leaders believe that our faith must not be confined to our churches on Sunday mornings. We maintain that our Christian values and compassion can be powerful tools for helping build a more just and humane nation. Pope Benedict thus spoke for all of us when he said that “Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted” and called for Christian participation “in the exchange of ideas in the public square.”

The pope was recalling the history we all cherish when he cited George Washington’s Farewell Address to note that, “religion and morality represent ‘indispensable supports’ of political prosperity.” The pope likewise voiced all of our concerns when he recognized the threats posed by secularism and materialism not only to our morality but to our happiness.

As people of faith, our concerns go well beyond the borders of our country. After the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, we joined our Jewish brothers in saying “Never Again!” For me, this commitment means never again allowing the Jewish people to be massacred or persecuted and thus helps to motivate my strong support for the State of Israel. But we also take from the Holocaust a universal “Never Again,” which means that we must never again allow genocide to be perpetrated against any of God’s children anywhere in the world.

Thus all of our hearts cheered when Pope Benedict stood before the United Nations and stated so forcefully that when states fail to protect the basic human rights of their citizens, “the international community must intervene.” Likewise, all people of faith applauded his comment in the same speech that it is religion’s “recognition of the transcendent value of every man and woman” which provides the powerful source of our commitment to resist genocide and terrorism.

My reaction to Pope Benedict”s visit may surprise some who have come to accept certain caricatures of my views of the Catholic Church. But as I have noted from the start, my critics have ignored the real point and strong emphasis of my words. I have indeed been quite zealous about condemning the past anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church. But I have been equally zealous in condemning Protestant anti-Semitism. Furthermore, as I noted in my 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown,” I have long viewed Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI as partners in this “righteous work” of overcoming our shared legacy of Christian anti-Semitism.

For decades I have taught that we Christians need to recognize that our roots are Jewish. As Christians we can only understand ourselves if we understand the Judaism from which we sprang. Pope Benedict made this very important point when he visited the Park East Synagogue in New York and shared that: “I find it moving to recall that Jesus, as a young boy, heard the words of Scripture and prayed in a place such as this.” With visits and words such as these, Pope Benedict is continuing the important work of recognizing our enormous Christian debt of gratitude to the Jewish people.

The world in which we live faces many difficult challenges. In recent days, we read in our paper of increased starvation due to higher food prices; of alienated youth planning to bomb their fellow students; of Islamic militants actually bombing innocents in Iraq and Israel; and about people so devoid of hope that they end their own lives.

I believe that the message of the Bible and of Judeo-Christian faith offers us timely answers to these problems. We were all inspired by Pope Benedict’s visit. It is my prayer that we will now follow his example and look beyond our differences to see that when it comes to the great challenges of our times, people of faith have much in common.

Pastor John Hagee is founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.

During his recent visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI not only conducted mass and met with the Catholic faithful, but he made a series of public statements about the role that our Judeo-Christian faith can play during these challenging times. As an evangelical Protestant I happen to disagree with Pope Benedict on many issues of Christian doctrine and ritual. But when it comes to his moral vision for America and the world I have one thing to say in response to the Pope’s visit: Amen.

I and many other evangelical leaders believe that our faith must not be confined to our churches on Sunday mornings. We maintain that our Christian values and compassion can be powerful tools for helping build a more just and humane nation. Pope Benedict thus spoke for all of us when he said that “Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted” and called for Christian participation “in the exchange of ideas in the public square.”

The pope was recalling the history we all cherish when he cited George Washington’s Farewell Address to note that, “religion and morality represent ‘indispensable supports’ of political prosperity.” The pope likewise voiced all of our concerns when he recognized the threats posed by secularism and materialism not only to our morality but to our happiness.

As people of faith, our concerns go well beyond the borders of our country. After the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, we joined our Jewish brothers in saying “Never Again!” For me, this commitment means never again allowing the Jewish people to be massacred or persecuted and thus helps to motivate my strong support for the State of Israel. But we also take from the Holocaust a universal “Never Again,” which means that we must never again allow genocide to be perpetrated against any of God’s children anywhere in the world.

Thus all of our hearts cheered when Pope Benedict stood before the United Nations and stated so forcefully that when states fail to protect the basic human rights of their citizens, “the international community must intervene.” Likewise, all people of faith applauded his comment in the same speech that it is religion’s “recognition of the transcendent value of every man and woman” which provides the powerful source of our commitment to resist genocide and terrorism.

My reaction to Pope Benedict”s visit may surprise some who have come to accept certain caricatures of my views of the Catholic Church. But as I have noted from the start, my critics have ignored the real point and strong emphasis of my words. I have indeed been quite zealous about condemning the past anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church. But I have been equally zealous in condemning Protestant anti-Semitism. Furthermore, as I noted in my 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown,” I have long viewed Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI as partners in this “righteous work” of overcoming our shared legacy of Christian anti-Semitism.

For decades I have taught that we Christians need to recognize that our roots are Jewish. As Christians we can only understand ourselves if we understand the Judaism from which we sprang. Pope Benedict made this very important point when he visited the Park East Synagogue in New York and shared that: “I find it moving to recall that Jesus, as a young boy, heard the words of Scripture and prayed in a place such as this.” With visits and words such as these, Pope Benedict is continuing the important work of recognizing our enormous Christian debt of gratitude to the Jewish people.

The world in which we live faces many difficult challenges. In recent days, we read in our paper of increased starvation due to higher food prices; of alienated youth planning to bomb their fellow students; of Islamic militants actually bombing innocents in Iraq and Israel; and about people so devoid of hope that they end their own lives.

I believe that the message of the Bible and of Judeo-Christian faith offers us timely answers to these problems. We were all inspired by Pope Benedict’s visit. It is my prayer that we will now follow his example and look beyond our differences to see that when it comes to the great challenges of our times, people of faith have much in common.

Pastor John Hagee is founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.